Rescued by the Brooding Tycoon Read Free

she who now came bouncing out onto the balcony and said, ‘Time for your nap.’
    ‘Not for another ten minutes,’ he growled.
    She smiled. ‘No, it’s now. No argument.’
    He grinned. ‘You’re a bully, you know that?’
    ‘Of course I know that. I work at it. Get going.’
    He shrugged, resigned and good-natured, and let her escort him as far as his bedroom door. Janine would have gone in with him, but he waved her away.
    ‘I can manage without supervision. Just keep your eyes open for Darius. I can’t think what’s keeping him.’ He closed the door.
    ‘What’s going on?’ Freya asked as the two women walked away.
    ‘Goodness knows. He was supposed to arrive this morning but he called to say there’d been an unexpected delay.’
    ‘And then all the other sons, Leonid, Marcel, Travis, Jackson, just a few days apart. Why is Amos suddenly doing this?’
    ‘I can only guess,’ Janine said sadly. ‘He puts on this big act of being fully recovered, but he had a scare. He’s seen that his life could end at any time, and he’s…getting things sorted out, is how he puts it, starting with changes to his will.’
    ‘Funny, he’s so organised that you’d think he’d have fixed that ages ago.’
    ‘He did, but I believe he’s taking another look at all of his lads and deciding—I don’t know—which one will manage best—’
    ‘Which one is most like him,’ Freya said shrewdly.
    ‘You’re very hard on him,’ Janine protested.
    ‘No more than he deserves. Of all the arrogant—’
    ‘But he’s very fond of you. You’re the daughter he never had and he’d love you to be really part of the family.’ She paused delicately.
    ‘You mean he wants me to be his daughter-in-law?’ Freya demanded, aghast. ‘The cheeky crook.’
    ‘Don’t call him a crook,’ Janine protested.
    ‘Why not? No man builds up the kind of fortune he did by honest means. And he’s taught his sons to be the same. Anything for money, that’s how they all think. So if one of them can talk me into marriage he’ll cop the lot. Was Amos mad when he thought of that? Nothing on this earth would persuade me—there isn’t one of them I’d ever dream of—ye gods and little fishes!’
    ‘Don’t tell him I told you,’ Janine begged.
    ‘Don’t worry. Not a word.’ Suddenly her temper faded, replaced by wicked mischief. ‘But I might enjoy a good laugh. Yes, I think it deserves that.’
    As she hurried away her mother heard the laughter echoing back, and sighed. She couldn’t blame Freya one bit. She, of all people, knew what madness it was to marry into this family.
     
    Darius arrived the next day, apologising with a fictional tale of business dealings. Not for the world would he have admitted that he’d been forced to leave Herringdean, return to the mainland and check into a hotel to put on a fresh suit. Normally, no power on earth could force him to change his plans and he resented it. Another thing for which Harriet Connor was to blame.
    He found her mysteriously disturbing because she seemed to haunt him as two people. There was the girl who’d briefly charmed him with her instinctive empathy for his feelings about the isolated place. And there was the other one who’d interfered with his plans, destroyed his dignity with her stupid hound, and committed the unforgivable crime of seeing him at a disadvantage. He had dismissed her from his mind but she seemed unaware of that fact and popped up repeatedly in one guise or another.
    A fanciful man might have defined her two aspects as the Good Fairy and the Bad Fairy. Darius, who wasn’t fanciful, simply called her ‘that wretched female’.
    His father greeted him in typical fashion. ‘So there you are at last. About time too.’
    ‘An unexpected matter that required my attention.’
    Amos grunted. ‘As long as you sorted it out to your advantage.’
    ‘Naturally,’ Darius said, brushing aside the memory of lying on the sand. ‘Then I got here as soon as I